Artist statement
I am a patient, patient. For 29 years, I waited to know the cause of my chronic pain. I have waited in different iterations of the same room with the same wholesale factory rug and the upholstered chairs with wooden armrests covered in ten coats of glossy polyurethane, to then be brought to another different but the same exam room to wait cold and sterile.
Much of my chronically ill life is spent in a state of anticipation, waiting to see the next specialist, waiting for tests, waiting for results, waiting in waiting rooms, waiting for prescriptions, waiting to come back in three months. Waiting through the pain. Waiting for a diagnosis. It is the bated breath that requires resilience. Time spent in limbo can drastically alter the perception of seconds passed; it transforms minutes into hours, hours into days, and days into weeks. Yet, some weeks disappear, and years can feel like only fleeting moments.
Time is expansive and enduring. Moments can be suspended in the vast subconscious, and if I, too, could just float, all my pain would dissipate. The fluidity of my chronically ill and disabled body, which often feels like it’s in a constant state of change and adaptation, mirrors the transformative power of the photographic medium. Digital and analog photographs, a book, cyanotypes, gelatin silver, lumen, and chemigram prints create multiple access points for deciphering and discernment, slicing infinite time into fractions of a second.
Patient, Patient is a testament to my lived experience of being silenced and disregarded as a woman in pain. Through a combination of past and present projects, I focus on the different methods of making, meditate on the process and materiality of healing, and express my embodied knowledge. My artistic practice has grown alongside my pain, and my life is inseparable from these images on paper, bedsheets, shells, and bone. Like a silver print developing in the darkroom, I’m bringing clarity to the surface by reaching out from the corners of my psyche to reclaim lost time and missed connections.
About the artist
Camilla Jerome (she/her) is an interdisciplinary artist from the North Shore of Massachusetts. Her work engages the fluidity of the photographic medium, spanning autobiographic and documentary images, private video performances, installation, and experimental camera-less photography. Jerome’s work sits at the intersections of disability, visuality, time, beauty, and gender. Her self-revelatory practice is always on the emotional edge, a form of therapy, a form of art, and a profound journey inward.
Jerome holds an MFA from the Rhode Island School of Design, Providence, RI; a BFA from Lesley Art and Design, Cambridge, MA; and is a member of Boston’s artist collective, Recently.
Her artwork is a part of collections at The Washington State Art Commission, Olympia, WA; The Kessler Center, Puyallup, WA; and the Fleet Library at the Rhode Island School of Design, Providence, RI. Jerome has exhibited internationally at Gallery Kayafas, Boston, MA; Galeria Valid Photo, Barcelona, Spain; CLAMP, New York City, NY; Umbrella Arts Gallery, New York City, NY; Sol Kofler Gallery, Providence, RI; Water Fire Art Center, Providence, RI; and The Scollay Square Gallery at Boston City Hall, Boston, MA.
